When I attended Law School, in my inheritance law classes, we discussed whether a biological child could inherit even if he or she had not been conceived during the lifetime of the father. When this discussion arose, our professor emphasized the need to reform the Civil Code and, at the same time, highlighted how important it is for legal systems to adopt clear positions on the issues that the development of the world, in a general sense, has brought onto the legal stage.

It is precisely the advances of humanity in the biomedical field, environmental matters, and the social sciences that justify the emergence of bioethics. In his article on bioethics, written by Daniel Callahan for the Encyclopedia of Bioethics, he explains the origins of this discipline as follows:

(…) it is a completely new discipline, born out of extraordinary advances in biomedicine, the environment, and the social sciences. These advances have provided a new world of broad scientific understanding and technological innovation, which seems to change forever interventions in the vulnerability of nature and of the human body and mind (…) and they bring renewed focus to concepts such as life and death, the management of pain and suffering, the right and power to control one’s own life, and the shared rights and responsibilities toward others and toward nature in the face of serious threats to our health and well-being.¹

As Javier Gafo states in his article History of a New Discipline: Bioethics, bioethics emerges as a new term intended to confront an ancient reality. It is this author who cites Van Rensselaer Potter, the first scholar to define bioethics, who described it as the systematic study of human conduct within the life sciences and health sciences, examined in the light of moral values and principles.

If you want, I can now:

• adapt it to a blog format,
• make it more formal or more accessible, or
• integrate footnotes and bibliography in proper academic style.

in the field of the human sciences and health care, insofar as such conduct is examined in light of moral values and principles.²

We can thus see how bioethics may be considered a relatively new discipline; however, as Gafo rightly points out, the context in which it develops is ancient. Indeed, within Western culture, the Hippocratic Oath—dating back to the 6th–1st centuries BCE—can be presented as a historical document that encapsulates the basic ethical obligations a physician must observe in the practice of the profession.³ The same author explains that similar ethical frameworks can be found in other regions of the world, citing as examples the initiation oath of India, the Oath of Asaph among the Jews, the Counsel of a Physician in Arab medicine, the Five Commandments and the Ten Requirements of Chen Shij Kung, a Chinese physician. In all these documents, essential common points can be identified, above all of an ethical nature: the need for the physician to alleviate suffering, the sanctity of human life, and the sanctity of the relationship between physician and patient.⁴

However, the resurgence of bioethics becomes particularly evident from the 1960s onward, alongside the major technological advances in biomedicine. These developments enabled the emergence of dialysis, organ transplantation, the contraceptive pill, prenatal diagnosis, artificial respirators, the first approaches to genetic engineering, and, at the same time, a growing awareness of the link between environmental issues and economic progress.⁵

Bioethics thus emerged as a social response to the technological changes that were affecting human beings and their environment. This task, however, was far from simple, as it required addressing complex questions and confronting new moral dilemmas that could not be left solely to the goodwill of physicians or to the presumed wisdom of their individual decisions. For this reason, bioethics had to face, from its very beginnings, the challenge of providing structured, interdisciplinary, and ethically grounded responses to these emerging issues.

as Callahan explains well, this involved two fundamental tasks: first, to erase the supposedly clear line that had been drawn between facts and values, and to challenge the belief that individuals well trained in science and medicine were capable of making not only medical decisions but also moral ones; and second, to find or develop the necessary methodology to deal with these new moral problems.⁶

From the response to these two tasks, the field of bioethics emerged. It became clear that moral problems had to be addressed in an interdisciplinary manner, since they involved different kinds of values. It was also accepted that bioethics had to include medical ethics. Based on this interdisciplinary nature, different branches of bioethics linked to broader areas of inquiry began to develop. Callahan studies them in four blocks: theoretical bioethics, which is related to the intellectual foundations of the discipline; clinical bioethics, which refers to the daily moral decision-making of those who care for patients; normative bioethics, which includes bioethical regulations and policies, legal or clinical rules, and procedures designed to be applied in specific cases or in general practices; and cultural bioethics, which refers to the systematic effort to relate bioethics to the historical, ideological, cultural, and social context in which it is expressed.⁷

Continuing along the same line of thought, bioethics is grounded in principles. Juan Carlos Siurana Aparisi, in his essay The Principles of Bioethics and the Emergence of Intellectual Bioethics, explains that the debate surrounding principles began in 1974, when the United States Congress created the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. This commission produced the Belmont Report, in which three basic ethical principles were identified: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.⁸ The same author explains that, subsequently, …

…to the formulation of these three principles, and since the Belmont Report was based solely on clinical research, in 1979 Tom Beauchamp and James F. Childress revisited them and redefined the principles as follows: nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, and justice.⁹

Nonmaleficence consists of the duty not to harm anyone.¹⁰ Beneficence implies the requirement that the physician employ their best efforts to do good. The principle of autonomy involves recognition of patients’ decision-making capacity, and the principle of justice seeks to avoid discrimination between equal cases based on economic, social, racial, or religious criteria.¹¹

All of these principles have been subject to criticism. For example, Gafo, in the essay cited several times throughout this text, points out that some authors consider the principle of beneficence to be, above all, an ideal attitude of moral perfection, and therefore not an obligation to do good. In this sense, it is not the same to justify that doing good is morally correct as it is to affirm that it is morally obligatory.¹² The main criticism of this principle lies in its risk of paternalism.¹³

Another criticism of the principles, in general terms, refers to their lack of hierarchy. In this regard, Miguel Julián Viñals, in an essay entitled Foundations of Bioethics for the Health Sciences: A Positive Perspective, states:

“(…) each of these principles is of the same level or importance, and in cases of conflict between several of them—as frequently occurs in bioethics—we must turn to the analysis of the specific case to determine which should prevail. This can lead (…) to a certain relativism, to exceptions that are not fully justified or that become predominant, or to situations in which, in practice, the …”

…the principle of autonomy ends up having de facto primacy over the others.¹⁴

Everything previously discussed allows us to form the view that bioethics is an interdisciplinary discipline. Its development is closely linked to the field of medicine, but it also involves the environment and the social sciences in general. For this reason, it can be concluded that its foundation is interdisciplinary and that, in all aspects related to its grounding, its definition, and its principles, the human being emerges as its main protagonist.

Bibliography

Callahan, Daniel. Bioethics. In Warren Thomas Reich (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Bioethics (2nd ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1995. Published in Revista Selecciones de Bioética, No. 2, Bogotá, 2002.

Callahan, Daniel. “Bioethics.” Encyclopedia of Bioethics. Course materials, p. 2–4.

Gafo, Javier. Historia de una nueva disciplina: La Bioética. Revista Razón y Fe, 1996, p. 88.

Gafo, Javier. Historia de una nueva disciplina: La Bioética. Course materials, pp. 3–6.

Potter, Van Rensselaer. Bioethics: A Bridge to the Future. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971. Cited by Gafo, Javier.

Siurana Aparisi, Juan Carlos. “The Principles of Bioethics and the Emergence of Intercultural Bioethics.” Available online at:
https://www.redalyc.org/html/2911/291122193005/

Si quieres, también puedo:

• adaptar la bibliografía a APA, Chicago o MLA,
• unificar citas repetidas (Ídem) de forma más elegante, o
• revisar que todas las notas al pie coincidan exactamente con el texto del ensayo.